The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Jessi Ngatikaura made some startling confessions about husband Jordan Ngatikaura including how he blackmailed her after her affair, what they lied about on screen and more.
During the Wednesday, November 19, episode of “The Viall Files” podcast, Jessi, 33, opened up about her relationship with Jordan and shared that she faced similar issues of emotional abuse in her first marriage.
“My muscle memory is me being used to being yelled at. I remember when I was first married, there were really hard moments,” Jessi said about former husband Zach. “He was super emotionally abusive — I would say more so than Jordan, to be honest.”
She continued: “Jordan is [emotionally abusive] in different ways but I had already dealt with worse. So it was normal for marriage where it’s just hard. At least it’s not as bad as my first one. But then over time, it got to that point where it was as bad.”
Jessi Ngatikaura’s marriage to Jordan Ngatikaura made headlines after she admitted on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives that she had an affair with Marciano Brunette. The couple started dating and got married before the hit Hulu series premiered in September 2024. During the first season, Jessi’s personal life wasn’t in the spotlight, but that all […]
Season 3, which debuted on Thursday, November 13, showed Jessi coming clean about a two-week emotional affair with Vanderpump Villa’s Marciano Brunette. During the show, she also addressed the emotional abuse she experienced with Jordan and how they found a way to reconcile.
Jessi’s podcast appearance on Wednesday told a different story, however, as she unpacked what never aired, what she wasn’t honest about on screen and how bad things really got in her marriage to Jordan. Keep scrolling for her biggest revelations:
A Past Marriage Before Jordan
Disney/Natalie Cass)
“We were both married before. Jordan was in a long term relationship after his first marriage so he had had an on and off girlfriend for three to four years. I was married for five years,” Jessi recalled. “Around the time I left my husband, Jordan was breaking up with that girlfriend of four years and he had already been divorced since he was 18.”
Jessi met Jordan at a gathering through mutual friends.
My husband actually came with me to a couple of [these group dinners]. One of the dinner parties right after I separated, I showed up alone and Jordan was like, ‘Where’s your husband?’ I was like, ‘We separated, we’re getting divorced,’” she added. “He’s like, ‘Me and my girlfriend just broke up last week.’ So we just sat and talked for hours about our breakups and we just bonded over that. Then a week or two later, he asked me out and I said yes.”
Jessi continued: “I was going through divorce while dating Jordan, which was not recommended. I definitely moved on too quickly. But at the time, I felt like I was probably just looking for a distraction and something to help heal the pain of the divorce.”
Similarities to Her 1st Marriage
Disney/Fred Hayes
Jessi experienced emotional abuse in her first marriage, as well as in her relationship with Jordan.
“I didn’t heal from my first marriage that was emotionally abusive and I jumped into a second one that repeated the same patterns,” she noted. “That’s a big reason why I’m where I’m at is because I didn’t heal so I allowed the same thing to happen to me twice.”
Jessi clarified, however, that Jordan and Zach were very different people.
“[My first husband is] a good Mormon boy so I thought I was marrying the safe choice. He had a good family and they were in the church. He had been a returned missionary and he was great for the first couple of years,” she said. “Then he got into some drugs and stopped working. Things just went downhill and he had a lot of anger issues.”
She continued: “But I came out of that marriage broken because of that and I carried a lot of wounds into the marriage I have now. Now history has repeated itself so now I’m dealing with recovering from both.”
Jessi later elaborated on the religious complications from her first marriage. While no longer a practicing Mormon, Jessi pointed out that she is still “sealed” to her husband in the church, which they refused to let her lift.
While her ex has remarried and is sealed with his current wife, Jessi’s attempts have been denied. She referenced “religious trauma” playing a role in some of the issues in her personal life.
What Caused Issues With Jordan
Courtesy of Jessi Ngatikaura/Instagram
“From my point of view, the more success I got maybe made Jordan [felt] a little threatened because he wasn’t the provider,” she noted. “Men do struggle with that sometimes, especially in Mormon culture. Even though he’s not Mormon, you grow up in that community and you have a certain way of thinking.”
Jessi said the fact that she was the breadwinner was “threatening” to her husband, adding, “Jordan ended up quitting his job and didn’t have a purpose. I actually think that played a lot into how he treated me.” (Jessi also mentioned in the podcast that she became “a multimillionaire within a few years,” courtesy of her hair care company JZ Styles.)
Warning Signs
Courtesy of Jessi Ngatikaura/Instagram
Looking back on the early days of her marriage, Jessi noticed that she didn’t ask “the right questions” to Jordan.
“I jumped so quickly and I literally used [our relationship] as a Band-Aid. So I wish I would have taken more time,” she said. “For example, I left my husband in September and me and Jordan were married by March. It was so quick. I’m very impulsive.”
According to Jessi, “everyone” in her life saw how Jordan treated her in season 3, adding, “The hardest part for me right now is there’s not a single person in my life who likes Jordan. They’ve all seen how he’s treated me and everyone keeps him at arm’s length. That’s a really hard roadblock to get over.”
Changing Her Name
Jessi confirmed that her choosing to go by the last name Draper over Ngatikaura had nothing to do with the state of her marriage. She cited pronunciation issues and branding as the reasons she publicly opted from using Ngatikaura.
The Real Timeline of Events
Jessi Ngatikaura, Marciano Brunette, and Jordan Ngatikaura Disney; Getty Images (2)
Despite how it was portrayed on the show, Jessi wasn’t separated from Jordan when he found out about Marciano.
“The reason I left was because we had been dealing with the affair for about six months behind closed doors. No one knew. During those six months, it got worse than it ever had. He was blackmailing me. He was threatening to send my texts out to Marciano to the world,” she claimed, noting that it was addressed on the show but didn’t make the final edit. “Anytime I did anything he didn’t agree with, he had it on his TikTok drafts and he was like, ‘I’m going to post it.’”
Jessi continued: “It was so toxic. I remember the day I left him, it got to a point where he was recording me and he’s taunting me and I was chasing him around the house. We were just screaming at each other. It was so bad.”
Jessi confirmed she was still living with Jordan when her affair with Marciano began.
“When me and Jordan were dealing with this alone, he said to me, ‘If anyone ever finds out, we need to say we were separated because then it’s less of a big deal.’ I remembered Jordan telling me that’s how he wanted me to handle this if anyone found out,” she recalled. “He ended up saying, ‘If this is going to come out, we have to tell the truth.’”
The couple didn’t want to “go along with a lie and get caught” in it.
The Worst Aspects of Their Marriage
Disney/Fred Hayes
“It was a lot of Jordan controlling how I dressed, what I did, what I said, how much I worked and everything. If I left the fridge door open — actually to this day I still have PTSD — when it starts to beep and my heart starts racing because I would get yelled at,” she said. “It was little things. I felt like I was always walking on eggshells with Jordan. I couldn’t do anything right at all.”
Jessi claimed Jordan “mom-shamed” her, called her bad names, would “physically block” her from leaving during arguments and eventually the behavior was witnessed by their kids. (Jordan will be telling his side of the story on the Wednesday, November 27, episode of “The Viall Files” podcast.)
According to Jessi, the turning point was when Jordan would tell their kids they were getting a divorce.
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“That’s when I was like, ‘This is so unhealthy and we can’t let our kids be witnessing that.’ We can’t use them as pawns,” she added. “That was the worst part of our separation because it was really bad. That was when he was yelling at me and I was really starting to see the effects of my kids and realizing what it might do to them.”
The pair were able to get to a better place but not before the affair created major issues.
“In the moment he cared more about his image and he kept using the word emasculating,” she recalled. “That’s all he cared about. It was embarrassing he got cheated on. He’s less of a man because he got cheated on and it wasn’t about the actual act. It was about how it made him look.”
